Welcome to the blog of a living being on planet Earth, a holder of (man-mandated) citizenship of India, and so on and so forth! I hope you find it worthwhile to observe the parts of my journey in this lifetime that I share here. "natant" means floating.

June 30, 2012

the climate change conundrum

Here is something on climate change mitigation effort I wrote in an editorial I contributed for the newspaper I work for:

Climate conundrum

The in-conclusive Rio summit proved yet again we have to
think like Mother Earth would

Undeterred by man-made boundaries we call 'nations', but
prompted in a large part by the activities of man in some of those nations, the
climate of our planet has been getting worse in recent decades.

The attempt to
rein in the severity of the climate change for the entire globe, therefore,
means all nations have to co-operate. But since many developing nations have
only recently jumped on the bandwagon of heavily carbon-reliant model of
development they will apply a big brake. The developed nations too will require
to forego many of the low-cost pleasures enjoyed by a reckless consumption of
natural resources but they have had their fun.

The above, in a nutshell,
describes the quandary every global summit on environment and development finds
itself in. The latest one, 20-22 June United Nations' Rio+20 Conference on
Sustainable Development, was also faced with the same dilemma.

The result: a
283-points declaration that specifically went neither here or there but instead
went everywhere. It was a fine rope walk not displeasing both the groups of
nations and yet leaving enough scope for either to complain of being held
hostage to the other. But even this was recognised -- the conference
secretary-general in one of his daily read-outs admitted the declaration
document was a compromise text but defended it saying that it is crucial if all
countries are to be on board, take ownership and share a collective commitment.

Be that as it may, it offers very little clarity on what is required of all of
us, whether we are Indian citizens or citizens of other countries. Political
heads of countries will continue to hanker based on their their perceptions of
political fall-out for themselves and their respective political parties in
their countries.

So you will have India and China use the high population
figure to arrive at a very low per-capital carbon footprint in order to claim
exemptions from harsh carbon-emission norms. Greenpeace, environmental-activist
organisation, had come out with a India-report five years ago which stated
although the per-capita CO2 emission was just 1.7 ton a year based on the total
population, Indians who earned more than Rs 30,000 per month were having a CO2
emission of 5 ton a year, which was not too far from the sixth-largest
per-capita carbon emission of France which was 8.6 ton.

Greenpeace did not give
us a figure for Indians earning more than Rs 1 lakh a month but if one were to
estimate it could match the per-capita figures of US, Russia, Germany, UK and
Japan, having the largest per-capita emission figures.

Equity stand taken by
India, China, Brazil and a few others is also a paradox because their growing
consumer markets are the most lucrative for companies from developed nations.
Moreover, the biggest beneficiaries of the industrialisation-driven,
environmentally-damaging exports from the developing countries are the
developed countries themselves who get access to cheap products and services.
We can, therefore, still put the ball back in their court.